Within one decade, Pittsburgh is producing nearly half of the steel in the United States.

During the First World War, Pittsburgh's steel companies produced 20 million tons of high-grade steel, largely for export to the European countries, who had been the primary combatants since August 1914.

Throughout World War II, Pittsburgh made more steel than the Axis Powers (Japan-Germany-Italy) COMBINED.

Pittsburgh "won" The Second World War for the Allies because of its remarkable output of steel.

The Golden Gate Bridge; the Empire State Building; all the skyscrapers of New York (pre-1970's) were built from steel milled in Pittsburgh. Almost every city along the Mississippi was constructed with Pittsburgh Steel.

Pittsburgh "built" America during the pre and post-war industrial revolutions. Abundant steel production was one of the main reasons the U.S. became an economic powerhouse; and the lone superpower after WW II.

By 1990, Pittsburgh had foresight enough to switch its focus from steel, to health care and technology - the two leading industries in southwestern Pennsylvania today. Yet the once-mighty U.S Steel, Kennametal, and Wheeling-Pitt remain some of the region's top employers.

Pittsburgh - and its surrounding area - has been relatively recession-proof; as it continues to prosper as one of the eastern United State's few economic bright spots - until now.

Despite the fact that America is hemorrhaging jobs, to enviro-Marxists like Lisa Jackson (the EPA Czar), western Pennsylvania is one big NIGHTMARE; an industrial area thriving beneath smokestacks - hundreds of them - and every one now appears on her radar!

Coal, oil, and natural gas industries represent over 90% of U.S. energy production - supplying the economy with over 13 million jobs.

But the Obama administration- using the EPA in IRS-like fashion- has undertaken a mission to harass them all: Incredibly - to the consternation of local officials - they have declared environmental warfare on western Pennsylvania!

And what do they wield as their chief weapon? It's the EPA's recent "endangerment finding" on CO2 (carbon dioxide). 

But is it rather an "insanity finding?" 

Who else but a lunatic Marxist like Barack Obama would sic the EPA on an ENTIRE region, and deliberately undermine them - pretending they pose a danger to "climate change."

That’s right, the oldest industrial area in the county, having built America from the ground up over the last 200 years, all of sudden becomes menacing because of it's carbon dioxide emissions:

Horrors! The earth's climate now threatened by Pennsylvania's industrial CO2 greenhouse gas. All the region's hospitals, emergency clinics, and ambulance crews have been placed on red alert; EMT's and paramedics are fraught with worry- expecting the worst.

Despite an official national unemployment rate of 9.8%, Jackson's heedless enforcement of the new Federal EPA regulations not only will undermine western Pennsylvania's strong economy, it also threatens our national security!

What if we got into a future conflict - say with Red China - and it turned into a prolonged war? Lacking heavy industry, what would we do for our steel? Call on Mexico? Canada? Or Venezuela?

What is this fool anti-President doing? Is Obama on the Chinese government's payroll? By harassing our heavy industries, it will only lead to their re-location overseas.

And for each Pennsylvania coal plant the EPA forces offline, it only guarantees future brownouts and blackouts - as less supply with increasing demand portends yet higher energy prices for working families, and more overall job losses for the region.

Meanwhile, the sacrificial Obama is back in the Whitehouse suffering in shirt sleeves, with the Oval Office heat cranked to a steady 80*- setting a sterling example. 

Predictably, the EPA has "gone Stalin"; ordering that CO2 be "scrubbed" from the smokestacks of all "polluters" who emit more than 25,000 tons a year of carbon dioxide (and five other heat-trapping gases) blamed for global warming.  

But there is no PROVEN existing technology that can do this!

This means that refineries, coal plants, manufacturers, heavy industries, etc, must either come up with a miracle CO2-reduction process in the next few years, or be shut down!

Hence, Western Pennsylvania companies may actually be forced to try the unproven, prohibitively expensive "CO2 sequestration" technology -which requires going to great lengths to pipe "ever-dangerous" CO2 back into the ground - hoping it doesn't seep back up; an insanely-complicated, unnecessary, near-impossible problem - which of course is the EPA's specialty.

Allegheny Energy Inc., (based in Greensburg Pa.), operates 10 coal-fired power plants that could be seriously constrained by EPA regulations. This puts nearly 8000 high-paying jobs directly at risk, plus a number of other associated enterprises that could be in danger. 

The EPA is also asking the Allegheny County Health Department come up with a workable plan to reduce pollution in the Monongahela Valley, requiring that they measure up to federal clean air standards by 2014.

At last, this should relieve the hundreds of thousands of people who everyday, roll around on Pittsburgh's pavement, coughing, gasping and wheezing - some nearly blue from lack of oxygen...from lack of "clean air."

U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works ( the nation's largest coke battery), also could be affected. One year ago, the company broke ground on a $1.1 billion project to install new coke batteries along the Monongahela river, and planned to refurbish its older ones at Clairton.